Walking Tall – The Payback
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C- Feature: D
Kevin
Sorbo has become the Dolph Lundgren of his time, a success in the action genre
who people like and has had some success, but did not have the permanent
staying power or respect he deserved over other dots who kept getting junk to
do no matter who the junk bombed and bored us all to no end in the
process. Sorbo reaches a new low (that
we will not totally blame him for) with Walking
Tall – The Payback (2006), a project being dumped on DVD to cash in on the
horrible remake with The Rock that shockingly was sent to movie theaters. We covered that turkey, which you can read
about at the following link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1696/Walking+Tall+(2004)
Sadly,
though Sorbo is Olivier as compared to Johnson, this project is a sequel to a
very bad remake that only became a moderate hit on video and both seem
strangely preoccupied with rewriting or writing over the original film. Politically correct Hollywood has suddenly
decided that the original 1973 Joe Don Baker B-movie classic or its 1975 sequel
without him were only “angry white man” films and we cannot have that on any
screen because that and only that equals fascism. So you get a man of color for the remake and
Sorbo here as a “nice white guy” who needs to take the town to town.
However,
these recent revisits are so obviously hell bent on PC politics that the
scripts are pathetically formulaic and are a brand-name sellout of a film that
was only a B-picture to begin with.
Sorbo could still become a surprise success in a real franchise that
used his talent and appeal if the right filmmakers came along, but he and no
other action star could save this mess about avenging the mysterious
disappearance of his father. The
subtitle does not make his action sequences kick like James Brown and the only
payback left at the end of the film is the customer who wants their money back
for sitting through this dud.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was shot on digital High Definition
video and it rivals Michael Mann’s Miami
Vice as the ugliest action production to date, with clarity and gutted
colors actually looking worse at times than the gutted glamour of Mann’s
revisiting. At least that had some money
in it. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes are
poorly recorded, have limited surrounds and are barely better than the
picture. Sorbo looks as bored as this
dud performs. The only extra is six
deleted scenes, but they deserved the ax, just like the greenlight for this
mess.
- Nicholas Sheffo
